The 2019 Chinon Clos du Chêne Vert, Monopole has a nose that you sniff and just want to get deeper into the wine, as if you're at the top of a 10-meter diving board… and you're being dragged into the depths of the pool below. It's dark and mysterious and intense at this early stage, but not quite ready to reveal itself.

—Just the beginning of Rebecca Gibb’s tasting note for Vinous
 
When Rebecca Gibb, MW, tasted Joguet’s single vineyard 2019 Chinons she couldn’t help but wax poetic. They’re the kind of wines that do that to even the most technically adept tasters. They’re also wines that get high points and that can age for decades.

And yet, Chinon (generally) and Joguet (specifically) remain a bit of an insider’s wine. Charles Joguet may be one of the appellation’s benchmark producers, and an early proponent of both single vineyard Chinon as well as organic farming. The wines may be longstanding Kermit Lynch imports; Joguet may be on all the best wine lists in Paris; but still, the wines aren’t the stuff of corporate gifts or international feeding frenzies.

So much the better for us! Kermit just shipped three Cabernet Francs from a top producer in a great vintage that have been aged for us.  If this were Burgundy, I don’t want to think about what the wines would cost — if we were even lucky enough to get more than a few bottles.

2019 was a great vintage at Joguet: warm and sunny enough to get ripe fruit, but fresh enough to preserve complexity and aromatics, maybe thanks to some pre-harvest rain, or just the great farming and super terroir. The wines come from different sites (details are below along with full tasting notes) and together they provide a portrait of the heights Chinon can achieve, whether on the left bank, the right bank, or the higher limestone plateaus.

Charles Joguet, Chinon Varennes du Grand Clos, 2019 $49.99
From the left bank of the Vienne River with old vines in siliceous chalk & clay. Gibb says: “The 2019 Les Varennes du Grand Clos is starting to mellow with an extra year in bottle since I last tasted. It continues to have its soft, welcoming opening, with attractive, pure aromatics: plenty of sweet black fruit and violet alongside a lightly spiced character derived from a small amount of oak. It remains lifted, bright and fresh, with a little pinch of tannins on finish. It continues to exude primary fruit and youthful sass and would benefit from extra time in bottle.” (91 points drink: 2024 - 2030)

Charles Joguet, Chinon Clos du Chêne Vert, 2019 $73.99
From 35-year-old vines on the right bank. Gibb says: “The 2019 Chinon Clos du Chene Vert, Monopole has a nose that you sniff and just want to get deeper into the wine, as if you're at the top of a 10-meter diving board (ha! like I've ever been at the top of a 10-meter diving board. No, thank you!) and you're being dragged into the depths of the pool below. It's dark and mysterious and intense at this early stage, but not quite ready to reveal itself. Work at it and there are the vanillins of oak barrel aging alongside dark, spiced black cherries. There's a reassuring sense of weight and balance, and a satisfying textural coating of fine, cocoa-like tannins, while the acidity gives the impression that this is a wine that knows what it is and where it's going. And it's going long and it's going far. (94 points drink: 2023 - 2037)

Charles Joguet, Chinon Clos de la Dioterie, 2019 $73.99
Generally considered the domaine’s flagship, this is from a white limestone and clay vineyard planted from 1930 to 1940. Gibb says: “The 2019 Clos de la Dioterie is a sophisticated, seductively perfumed style—brooding yet aromatic. Its concentrated flavors are pure; it remains light and elegant, with a delectable, chalky, veil-like texture residing on your tongue as the finish draws out with precision, sinew and line. This is a fine, texturally intriguing wine. (95 points drink: 2025 - 2038)